Donald Trump’s Most Obvious Lie Gets a Boost from Ben Carson

At this point in the presidential election cycle, political journalists everywhere should seriously consider bookmarking Wikipedia’s page listing every conspiracy theory known to man, because Donald Trump just resurfaced a new one: that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks shortly after the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

Unlike several of his other dubious statements, however, Trump doubled down on this one: after he made the claim during a campaign stop in New Jersey (“I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down”), he reiterated his belief to George Stephanopoulos during an appearance on This Week.

“You know, the police say that didn't happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time,” Stephnopoulos said. “So did you . . . misspeak yesterday?

“It did happen,” Trump insisted. “It was on television. I saw it.”

He continued:

There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down—as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George.

Now, I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

If anything, Trump’s claims made Dr. Ben Carson, the candidate seemingly most likely to believe anything he hears, look gullible once again: not only did Carson agree with Trump, Carson went one step further and said he viewed a video of New Jersey cheering upon hearing of 9/11. A video of that nature, fact checkers agree, does not exist.

Several fact-checking operations have jumped on Trump’s claim: The Washington Post gave his claim the rare rating of four Pinocchios, pointing out that while there was, indeed, a widely circulated video of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks, it was filmed in Palestine. PolitiFact, a separate fact-checking Web site, agreed that the claims were false, describing several debunked rumors reported on at the time.

Given how often fact checkers have examined Trump’s claims this cycle, however—and given that they seem to have no effect on his popularity—there’s little reason to expect Trump will face much blowback.